


Colder Here Inside in Silence

by TheOceanIsMyInkwell



Series: I Promise You It's Worth It [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Professors, Angst, Coming Out, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Hurt Peter Parker, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Light Angst, Panic Attacks, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter is a freshman at MIT, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony has anxiety in this but he doesn't mention it just yet, Tony is a Professor, Trans Peter Parker, it will come up later in the series as they...Bond™
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 20:17:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18880486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOceanIsMyInkwell/pseuds/TheOceanIsMyInkwell
Summary: The blood thunders in his ears. Heat washes over him in a deluge--he could swear he's being incinerated from the inside--and still he can't register what he's looking at. The stain stretches dark and ragged up the seam of the crotch of his jeans, and it looks so final, so permanent, soviolent--“Dr. Stark?”The man doesn't turn at the first croak of his voice. Peter pushes himself up to his feet with a force he can't identify and catapults in the direction of his professor.“Doctor--d-doctor Stark? I--” A hitch in his lungs. His eyes.His eyes. Where are Dr. Stark's eyes? “C-can I have a minute--five--outside, I, I, I think I'm having a--” The next few words rip out of him with a cruel vacuum of breath. “P-p-panic attack.”--Though everything in Peter tells him that Dr. Stark is the safest man to come out to, it does nothing to diminish the terror of saying those crucial words aloud.I'm a trans guy.





	Colder Here Inside in Silence

**Author's Note:**

> A lot of you were just as Pumped™ as I was to see more of my professor-student AU, so here I am delivering the (accidentally angsty) content (oops) that y'all crave. Listen. Mates. You have no idea how excited I am for this universe. I have literally been bursting nonstop with ideas for upcoming installments in this series (and many of them are painful, I'm warning you ahead of time).
> 
> [Part 3 of my drabble collection, Desperate Measures for Desperate Times](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18714964/chapters/44649607), is a lot fluffier than this and set a few months after this oneshot. I'm striving to post stories chronologically this time around, folks :')
> 
> This is also in fulfillment of one of my Iron Dad Bingo prompts, Trope: Coming Out.
> 
> Trigger warnings: Detailed description of a panic attack; obvious references to periods; mentions of gender dysphoria; very subtle/implied transphobia from an unnamed character.
> 
> Theme song and title inspiration: ["Come Out and Play"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXFdnHiGwos) by Billie Eilish

The instant Tony meets Peter, he has three impressions of the kid.

One, he’s undeniably a genius.

Two, he’s probably the type to fall under _extroverted introvert_ on some personality test or other. He arrived first day of class chatting into the speaker of his headphones with a roll of his eyes and a soft, almost conspiratorial smile on his face, an expression that swiftly fell into a professional blankness as he took his seat. It struck Tony as a constructed blankness that was subtly undergirded by a tension around his eyes and between his shoulders.

And three, something heavy lies on Peter’s mind. Tony has the distinct feeling that the kid doesn’t think anyone else notices, but he does. He is the professor, after all: he sees far more in front of the classroom than anyone outside the field would ever wager.

Some days are better than others. Peter’s a likeable guy, for sure. He makes fast friends with two students in particular, Daisy and Manuel, who are usually seated near enough to him to be assigned together for small-group discussions. Tony watches from the corner of his eye as Peter flips through half-torn pages in his notebook and then gesticulates passionately to his classmates. A laugh or two erupts from them, and a lightning bolt of pure joy creases Peter’s face. His eyes brighten, his body relaxes, and he almost looks as if he’s the typical seventeen-year-old kid that hit the ground running in pursuit of his dreams here at MIT.

And then there are days...there are the other days. Peter slips in behind the very last of the stragglers and he leans in on himself at his desk as if he could possibly make himself look any smaller than he already is. Tony rapidly becomes familiar with the kid’s nervous tics: scratching at the inside of his wrist underneath the cuff of his shirt; tugging at his left ear; gripping his pen from opposite ends with enough force to dare it to snap; yanking at the bit of overgrown hair at his nape. Sometimes, when Peter seems far gone enough that he’s no longer even present, the only sign of life in him is the infinite tracing of figure eights with his middle finger over the palm of his right hand.

Those are the days Peter doesn’t even speak. Nor does he move to stain the blank page in his notebook with scribbles.

Tony mentions it offhand to Pepper one night--he tells her nearly everything about his students; it’s just one of those teacher things that makes for warm domestic moments with his wife after a long day. But for some reason, he hesitates for several seconds before bringing up Peter to her. The words stick in his throat with something almost like fear (of what? for whom? and why? he could never tell for the life of him) before he’s finally able to force them out.

“You could start by asking him if everything’s okay,” Pepper says, clicking off her smartphone. She slips off her glasses and sets them in a prim rectangular formation next to her wristwatch and wedding band on her bedside table.

Tony ducks his head to hide his expression and keeps his hands busy by digging into the bag of pretzels between them and offering her a piece. “I dunno. Sounds kind of...overbearing. Presumptuous. Jumping the gun, probably. All the sorts of things you said made me annoying as hell.”

Pepper sighs, soft and fondly exasperated. “I called you presumptuous and jumping the gun for assuming I wouldn't say yes. I never said you were overbearing. That, Mr. Stark, is a title relegated to me.”

“Beg your pardon, Mrs. Potts.” He drops a kiss on the tip of her nose. “Didn't mean to usurp.”

“See? What did I say.” She smirks at him and winks. “But back to what you were asking me. Remember Carina from last fall semester?”

Tony's mouth twitches. “Carina was different.”

“Different how? Sounds pretty much like the exact same behavior as you're describing in Peter.”

“I don't know, I just--” Tony cuts himself off, a flush of heat racing through him at the frustration of being unable to articulate his uneasiness. “Okay. Okay. Sorry. You're probably right. I mean, what am I talking about, of course you're right. You're Pepper Potts. You're literally the last person on earth to give bad advice.”

“Logic tells me that's statistically untrue, but I can take it.”

“Eh, it's twelve percent true. I did have the better choice in napkins for the wedding.”

“Hey, twelve percent's good enough for me.” She leans over to pop a pretzel in his mouth. “So you'll talk to him?”

“Probably. Definitely. Not by--not by email though. I'll just...pull him aside tomorrow after class. Yeah, sounds like a plan.”

\--

Peter's unsure if he’s having a fever, but if so, now is absolutely the worst time to be having one. His mental checklist is screaming at him in neon red letters: study for his biochemistry exam; prepare a PowerPoint for him economics presentation; finish those two darned worksheets for French class; and take a quick peek at his notes for today’s quiz in Dr. Stark’s intro to design class. Predictably, he’s gotten absolutely none of them done because he woke up feeling like crap. Or rather, crappier than the usual day in a student’s life. He’d dragged his eyelids open to the harsh fluorescent light in the room that his roommate was constantly leaving on in the mornings, and gone to roll over off his twin mattress, only to grunt in pain at the pounding headache at the base of his skull and the inexplicable soreness in his muscles. He may have been one of the top students in anatomy class back at Midtown, but he definitely doesn’t remember there being this many muscles in one human body.

It doesn’t help that Dr. Stark seems to be shooting him looks of concern the instant he sidles into class three minutes late. He mouths a tired “sorry” at his professor and takes the outstretched multiple-page quiz with a sluggish hand. Peter somehow manages not to trip over himself more than twice on his way to his desk. Daisy only glances up a second to offer him a two-finger wave, then goes back to focusing on her own paper.

Peter hasn’t even started the quiz and the words are already beginning to swim before his eyes. He curses to himself, wishing he’d taken the last Tylenol in his drawer after all. The blue lights of the classroom aren’t doing his throbbing eyeballs any favors, either. He drops his head into his hands and simply breathes.

Two minutes. Two minutes of taking a break from the world surely won’t hurt.

In and out. In and out. In, out. In, out. His heart clenches against his will when he stumbles on the realization that his breathing is growing too fast. Recalling one of the techniques that he and May developed over the years, he lowers one of his hands under his desk and curls it into a fist, then slowly releases one finger at a time in sync with his mental count. _In, one, two, three, four, five, hold. Out, one, two, three, four, five. In, one, two, three, four, five, hold. Out, one, two, three, four, five. And again_.

It works for a bit. The growl of the beast that gnaws at his ribs quiets inside its cage, and Peter manages to get the shaking in his right hand under enough control to start pushing the end of his pencil against the paper. The god-forsaken Times New Roman font in front him still lurches into odd shapes, but somehow, distantly, Peter finds it in himself to power through the problems in front of him. 

Some part of him dimly registers Dr. Stark's shadow making a circuit in his direction. The professor has never done rounds during a quiz before. Should he be worried? He's too exhausted to be worried. All he can think of now is how close he is to being splintered, dashed to pieces, and there's a fire in the pit of his stomach that refuses explanation.

There's a poke at the round of his bicep. Peter blinks. It's Daisy, motioning with her pen for him to pass up his paper for her to give to Dr. Stark at the end of the row. He rushes to shove the paper in her general direction with an apology tripping and fizzling on his lips.

And then his gaze falls on his lap and for one blank, terrifyingly empty second he doesn't understand why his heartbeat has galloped to the pace of a kickdrum--

Oh.

 _Oh_.

Fuck. Fuck fuck _fuck_.

The blood thunders in his ears. Heat washes over him in a deluge--he could swear he's being incinerated from the inside--and still he can't register what he's looking at. The stain stretches dark and ragged up the seam of the crotch of his jeans, and it looks so final, so permanent, so _violent_ \--

“Dr. Stark?”

The man doesn't turn at the first croak of his voice. Peter pushes himself up to his feet with a force he can't identify and catapults in the direction of his professor.

“Doctor--d-doctor Stark? I--” A hitch in his lungs. His eyes. _His eyes_. Where are Dr. Stark's eyes? “C-can I have a minute--five--outside, I, I, I think I'm having a--” The next few words rip out of him with a cruel vacuum of breath. “P-p-panic attack.”

He doesn't wait for an answer. One minute he's watching Dr. Stark's eyes widen, and he’s transfixed with an almost morbid kind of fascination on his teacher’s reaction, and then the next he's somewhere outside--hallway?--fumbling for his phone. His memory skips, sometimes, when this happens, just like his fingers forget to work. His whole body is quaking from its very core.

Knees. He's on his knees. He gropes upward for the nearest bench, slides onto the dingy cushion. The phone slips from his hands and clatters to the floor; Peter can do nothing but stare stupidly as it skitters across the linoleum tiles. 

Ned. He has to call Ned.

The last of his rationality is engulfed by the fiery panic that has been licking at his heels since the moment he opened his eyes this morning. He’s dying. Some part of him should know he’s not, it screams that he’s really not, but his bones could be disintegrating inside him, for all he knows.

He’s not supposed to be bleeding. He hasn’t been bleeding in--in--

God, he can’t even count.

His vision begins to spin. He hasn’t been breathing for quite some time now. He wonders how much oxygen deprivation his lungs could take from the panic attack before they start to buckle under the pressure. There are shadows and he wants to close his eyes, but nothing in his body will cooperate, just like the day it chose to be born with the double X chromosome and--

There’s a face. He knows that face.

Dr. Stark’s visage, split with concern, is hovering in Peter’s field of vision at a height that doesn’t make sense.

“You can breathe. I promise, you can breathe. Watch my chest. Shh, it’s fine, just breathe with me. Watch my chest, Peter. That’s right. Focus.”

Peter lets out an ugly, raw gasping sound as his first gulp of air punches its way out of his throat. He’s in the hallway on the second floor of the mechanical engineering building. There are lights above him, the low buzz of students’ chatter from behind closed doors, the squeak and bang of a bathroom entrance swinging closed upstairs.

“Oh my God,” he chokes out.

“It’s okay. It’s okay. Just keep focusing on breathing.”

“I’m s-sorry.”

“Nothing to apologize for. Don’t try to talk just yet.”

Peter obeys. He trains his gaze instead on Dr. Stark’s hand, the pattern of veins and calluses crisscrossing the skin, and hones in on the rhythm of the man’s chest. He struggles at first to keep count, but as he forgets the numbers and simply loses himself in the even gestures Dr. Stark is making, the invisible vice grip around his chest begins to fall away. Other little details filter in: the smell of his professor's shampoo; the fact that the man is kneeling on the linoleum in front of him; that catch in Dr. Stark's voice, just on the edge between roughness and emotion.

“That’s it. You sound much better already. Keep going, just like that.”

“Sorry.”

“Nope.” Dr. Stark wags a finger. “That’s a banned word. Sorry, Mr. Parker.”

Peter stumbles on the wet giggle that hits him out of nowhere. “You s-said it too, professor.”

“That,” says the man pointedly, though with his voice ever so gentle, “is because I’m the prof and I can do what I want. And I want you to not be sorry. Now. Are we good? Do you need me to count with you? Or, uh, d’you think you need a day off to recover? I’m not gonna report you to the dean if you need to book it outta here.”

Another inappropriate chuckle bubbles up in Peter's chest, though he manages to swallow it down. “Professor, the class--I--”

“They can stare at equations on the board for another five minutes. It's a dash of independent learning. Never hurt anybody. Seriously, Peter. Do you need the day off?”

Dr. Stark's tone is so soft, his words so deliberate and slower than usual, and it should be a comfort to Peter, but instead all he feels is the aftershocks of shame. It takes every fiber of willpower in his being not to rock back on his heels from the impact of the desire to be swallowed up by the ground.

Next thing he knows, he's babbling. “I'm fine now, I swear, thank you so much, Dr. Stark--I, I really appreciate it, you have no idea--I'm sorry that, that, uh. Well. This doesn't usually happen, I mean, it rarely affects my work…”

(That's a lie and he doesn't have to be a mind reader to gather from one glance at Tony that the man knows it's a lie, too.)

(Fuck.)

(He has no idea how to fix this.)

“Even if it did,” Tony interrupts him with a sad little smile, “that's not your fault, is it?”

This is the part where Peter is supposed to shake his head, but he's utterly unaccustomed to living without the weight of the fetters of guilt around his ankles.

“Well. In case you change your mind, here you go.” A rustle and a thud.

His backpack. Dr. Stark has just dropped his backpack, zipped up neatly with the pencil stuck back in the side pocket, on the bench next to him. He's giving him a way out. Holding the door open.

That single realization makes Peter reel all over again with an excruciating emotion he cannot pinpoint.

“Okay,” he says thickly. _Thank you_ , his mind prompts him; the words are lost on their way down to his tongue. “Okay, I--uh. Okay. Yeah.” He clutches the strap of his bag in a white-knuckled grip then because it's far, far better right now than letting Dr. Stark see the vestiges of the tremor in his palms.

Tony's knees creak as he eases himself back to his feet. “Why don't you just sit back and hang out here for a bit? What d'you say? Your classmates probably demand my presence now, but there's only fifteen-ish minutes left of lecture and then we're all free men again. I have office hours then, too, in case you don't remember. Or didn't memorize the syllabus. Just, y'know, in case you needed to--yeah.”

The unbidden smirk that twists at Peter's mouth surprises the boy so much that the embarrassment and hilarity of the situation war within him for a painful moment. Dr. Stark himself, he tells himself incredulously, is babbling just as much as Peter was a moment ago in his effort to make one student feel more comfortable.

He makes a split-second decision, one that he knows will change his course permanently, but one that he can still pretend for a few moments longer is an innocent one without consequences.

“Yeah, that--that sounds great. I'll just...wait out here for a bit.”

“Great! Uh, okay.” Tony presses his lips together in a semblance of a smile. Thrusts his hands into the pockets of his slacks and spins on his heel to walk back into the classroom, then swivels back again with a vague and expectant look at Peter that is difficult to decipher.

Peter returns the awkward flat-lipped combination of a smile and a grimace. “Okay.”

“Uh-huh. Okay.”

\--

Peter doesn't know what he would have preferred: a long and awkward walk to Dr. Stark's office filled with irrelevant small talk, or a short fifty-step jaunt upstairs with little time to gather his thoughts. As it is, Dr. Stark's office is merely a floor above their classroom, so the latter option it is. 

And the funny thing about a post-panic attack headspace, when all you're yearning for is to be left alone and yet every primal instinct in your body is screaming to be held and never let go, is that there is no amount of rationalization that will calm the thump in your chest at the notion of reaching out for help.

Peter's been to counseling before. He's had therapists--some okay, some better than others, a handful mind-blowingly real and candid--and he _knows_ , intellectually, that he's doing the right thing. That the only way to address the panic and not let it fester is to take the hand that the adult reaches out to you.

But the brain has its own ideas. Oh, doesn't Peter know this: how his body likes to war with his will, his consciousness. Chemicals, neurons, reactions--misfirings. At what point do the hormones end and the spirit begin?

“Are you doing better?”

Peter sinks into the tiny couch opposite Dr. Stark's desk. He offers a wobbly nod.

“Now, I...I don't want to be overstepping any boundaries, and by all means, if I am, _please_ stop me and tell me to bug off. I just, uh, just need to make sure that there wasn't...something I said? Something in the classroom environment? That might've, you know, triggered...it?”

Small comfort that Dr. Stark seems to be floundering as much as Peter is, but still a comfort all the same. Peter rushes to assure the man that it was nothing in class.

And in the same breath, he makes the first of many mistakes, and he can do nothing except hear the words leap from his mouth and feel the floor fall away from underneath him. “It was...it was something that happened _in_ class but not, like, _because_ of the class, it was more like a, um, medical issue that--that--"

Dr. Stark's face lights with alarm. His feet thud on the floor as he makes to get up. “Do we need to get you to the student clinic?”

“No, I, it's all right, professor, I swear, this isn't--this isn't an emergency. It's just I haven't bled in--I mean--oh, God. Just forget I said that.”

Predictably, Peter's plea has little effect on Dr. Stark's worry. If anything, he's only managed to fan the flames further.

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, pretend I never said any of that…” Apologies spill out of him because there's nothing left inside him that can turn back time. He closes his eyes and sucks in a shuddering breath. His hands are curled into fists at his sides, unbeknownst to him. His mind races.

 _Reach out. Reach out. Learn to trust. You can do this_.

His memory flits to the faces of his past. Connor in first year of high school: the look of abject panic in his eyes as Peter blurted out the words _I'm a boy_. May, tears standing in her irises, arms out for a hug, ready to provide comfort she could not define to a nephew suffering a pain she could not understand. Ned, eyes crinkling at the sides in a conspiratorial humor. MJ and the unbearable weight of empathy in her face that is usually so schooled. His geography teacher and the bile in his throat. The stranger on the corner of 7/11 whose goddamn opinion shouldn't even _matter_ and yet… And yet.

And he remembers the little sticker on the wall next to where Dr. Stark's name is mounted in rearranging letters. Round and striped with a rainbow, with the letters in all caps: ALLY.

It's his green light. It's his safe pass, it's his backpack handed back to him in the middle of the hallway.

But safe, genius as he is, has never been an easy concept for Peter Parker to grasp.

Still, he knows it's now or never. He claws in a breath and takes the plunge.

“I'm what they--I don't know how much you know about the LGBTQ community, Dr. Stark.” Stupid. Stupid. Did you not just see the sticker outside his door? “I mean, I'm sure you know a lot, but just in case--I guess I should just--I'm trans.”

Dr. Stark's left eyebrow creases. It's only an infinitesimal fraction of silence, but for Peter it is purgatory.

“FTM,” he rushes to clarify. “Trans man. I'm a, I'm a transgender man. Which means I have--” Peter catches himself huffing out a laugh at what he was almost about to say. He switches tack. “I have anxiety, and it gets compounded by the gender dysphoria. A lot. Like, the majority of my triggers are more dysphoria-related, but then stress exacerbates everything, and I've been struggling to keep up with things lately and so today when I realized--”

He's rambling. Again. He snaps his jaw shut with a click.

“Peter,” Dr. Stark says. There's something about his tone, hovering somewhere between desperation and wonder and tragedy and--and admiration, that makes it suddenly impossible for Peter to look him in the eye. The boy studies the frays in the knees of his jeans instead, avoiding the ragged stain of blood in his crotch that is swiftly turning dark with oxygen and the shadow of his own fist over it.

“Peter,” the man says again. “Thank you.”

Peter furrows his brow and stares at a spot on Tony's throat, bewildered.

“I can't even begin to imagine what kind of guts it took to say that. Pretty damn coherently, I might add. Well. Regardless. _Thank you_. For trusting me with this, even though we hardly know each other, and letting me know what's been going on.”

Peter has the distinct and furious thought then that he's done nothing to be thanked for.

“Thank you for understanding,” he mutters. He risks a glance upward then, only to be shocked by the pain that flashes across his professor's face.

“Sorry,” the man says after a beat, once he's schooled his expression into something more neutral. “Sorry. It's just--it's frankly ridiculous that we live in a world where people have to thank others for _understanding_ their existence.”

Peter tries for a grin. He knows it comes out bitter: perhaps making him look a bit older than he actually is, but it feels right at this crossroads in the conversation.

“I know what you mean,” Peter says. He presses two fingernails against his wrist under the cuff of his shirt--force of habit more than anything else, really. In his struggle to articulate his next few words, he completely misses how Dr. Stark's gaze darts to the spot where Peter is scratching himself. “And in an ideal world, I guess, that principle would stand. But like, it happens so few times that somebody understands and--and I feel like I gotta express that, you know? I mean. It helps. It helps me remember that…”

“...That there are actually people out there in your corner, maybe?” Tony prompts him.

Peter swallows. “Yeah--that.”

“I’ll always be here, Pete.” Tony doesn't realize the nickname has rolled off his tongue until a beat too late, but it seems as though Peter hasn't registered the moniker. “I may not be of much help, but...I'm an old man that's always got an ear ready for you. This is a safe space.”

 _Safe_. There it is again. Something in Peter's lungs convulses. It's gotten hard to breathe again, not from panic, but from the pain of the stopped up tears that have blindsided him. The bridge of his nose stings with the effort to hold it all in.

Safe. Safe, safe, safe.

Oh, God.

Oh God oh god--

The enormity of what he's just done crashes into him with the weight of crumbling concrete.

He's just come out to Dr. Stark.

“Oh, my God,” he breathes out, strangled. And then the moisture comes, and it's not in trickles but in torrents, and it's anything but poetic or poised. There's snot running down his chin and salt in his mouth and no matter how much he swipes at his cheeks with his sleeves the tears won't stop coming--

“Deep breaths, kid.” A rasp. Tony's pushed a rumpled box of Kleenex across the desk to him. “It's okay. It's okay. You're okay.”

“Uh-huh,” Peter warbles out between the quiet sobs, because he knows it's true. It is okay. He is okay.

“Everything's fine.”

 _Not really, but someday it will be fine_.

“I'm here, Pete. That's not gonna change. I'm here and I support you.”

_Thank you._

_I don't deserve you._

_Thank you. Please don't go_.

“It's okay. Just let it out.”

“S-sorry. It's these pesky hormones, y'know?” Another mad swipe with his sleeve, another round of tissues, and Peter devolves into a series of dry hiccups. “You'd think they wouldn't bother me anymore after all the _other_ hormones I've been pumping into my body, but no.”

Dr. Stark's laugh then is truncated, incredulous, like the joke flew at him from left field and knocked all the relief out of him. “Oh, God,” he gasps out, and he sounds pretty near tears himself. Shaky. “Oh, good grief. How many times have you gotten to use that pun?”

Peter blows his nose loudly and grins. “If it makes you feel any better, Dr. Stark, you're the first one to hear that particular one.”

The man is full-on laughing now. “Well, it was _criminal_.”

“Hey. I'll have you know I haven't even _scratched the surface_ of all the raw comedic potential in the gay community. Like, there's way more where that came from.”

“Sounds like a challenge, Mr. Parker.”

“Only if you think it's hard to come up with something, Dr. Stark.”

“Oh, you're on. I'm going to blow you out of the water so hard, you won't even have a chance to surf.”

“Oh, really?” A hiccup.

“Uh-huh. Really. How does coffee at Dunkin tomorrow sound?”

Peter strives to suppress the watery grin that rises up in him at that, but it's futile. He raises his gaze to meet his professor's own faintly glossy eyes.

“Prepare to get gay-ducated, Dr. Stark.”

Tony cringes violently. “Kid. You wanna know something? You're making this way too easy for me.”

**Author's Note:**

> It's 4:30am and I just finished typing the last 2.5k words of this on my phone. Please give it up for my sore biceps eyyyy *bisexual finger guns*
> 
> Also, fun fact (sort of): this is a dramatized version of my own experience coming out as trans to a professor after having a panic attack in his class, and being talked down from a panic attack by another professor on a separate occasion (the latter of which is the one who acts like my adoptive (iron) dad). I felt compelled to try to convey in this fic the complex emotions of coming out to someone who's an ally, but all the same being forced by circumstances to come out outside one's own terms or timeline. Ngl, I cried after coming out to my prof, even though he's the absolute best and has been amazingly supportive, bc I just couldn't believe for the longest time ever that I had just come out to somebody and not suffered rejection or negative repercussions. I'll get there...eventually. Like...listen. Anyone who even considers coming out to anybody is metal AF. Power and love to you all, and most especially to my fellow members of the LGBTQ+ community. Y'all are badasses.
> 
> Please let me know your thoughts and reactions in the comments below! <3 -Kaleb

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [subject: names](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19184212) by [transpeterparker (partlycharlie)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/partlycharlie/pseuds/transpeterparker)




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